Duke Research Blog

Grad Students Share Winning Ideas

June 13th, 2013

By Karl Leif Bates

Clare Fieseler wants to teach grad students how to make short films explaining their science.

Duke students apparently really care about improving graduate education in the STEM fields (science, technology engineering and math). Two Duke projects have been named winners in a National Science Foundation contest to develop ideas to do just that.

The Innovation in Graduate Education Challenge, invited graduate students to submit ideas with the potential to improve graduate education and professional development. Ideas could be oriented to students, faculty, departments, institutions, professional societies, and/or federal agencies.

Second place and a $2,000 prize went to “The Scientists with Stories Project,” founded by Clare Fieseler, a 2010 masters graduate from Duke who is now a PhD student in Ecology at Chapel Hill. Grad students on both campuses designed and conducted a 6-day workshop on storytelling and video skills in 2010 which resulted in short films about their science — several of which have won awards at festivals. The model of giving grad students the tools to communicate with the general public is one Fieseler thinks can be spread to other campuses.

David McDonald would like to see professional development modules added to the grad school experience.

Third place and a $1,500 prize went to Duke Genetics & Genomics PhD student David McDonald for his proposed professional development curriculum that includes mentors and modular classes to help students learn about grant writing, mentoring, lab budgets and service and outreach while they’re pursuing their scientific training. He calls it “Creating a Cooperative Environment for Graduate Studies and Career Preparation.”

More than 500 proposals were submitted to the NSF and eight prizes were awarded. Did we mention that two of them were from Duke?

Learn more about these students and their projects.

Grey Seal’s Travels Hint at Animal’s Unknown Habits

May 29th, 2013

By Ashley Yeager

This juvenile male grey seal swam up onto a North Carolina beach recently, surprising locals. Image courtesy of: StarNews Online.

On May 23, visitors to Carolina Beach met an unexpected guest — a male grey seal.

The 300-plus-pound juvenile was somewhat of a surprise to North Carolinians, since his typical habitat ranges from the coastal waters of Canada and extend south to about New Jersey. It is the first time a grey seal has been seen as far south as the Carolinas.

But the seal’s southern swim wasn’t too surprising to Duke marine biologist Dave Johnston.

“Things have been weird with seals for the last ten years or so. We’ve been seeing more harp, hooded and grey seals much farther south, usually the males,” he says.

To track seals’ travel patterns, Johnston and his colleagues have started attaching cell-phone enabled GPS tags to the animals in the Cape Cod region. They tagged their first grey seal, Bronx, last summer and from his transmissions alone have learned where the creatures like to hang out, how deep they can dive and just how far they can swim.

Bronx has covered the equivalent of the land area of Massachusetts and Connecticut combined during his swims. He’s explored below the ocean depths nearly 900 feet — a little more than a tenth of a mile, and he’s even made an international trip, crossing into Canadian waters.

But Bronx swims mostly in the waters near Cape Cod and Nantucket Islands, Johnston says.

Grey seals like Bronx have had a rough history in the region. In the 1800s, humans hunted and killed the entire population living in the Gulf of Maine. For a long time, there were few or no sightings of the animals. But since 1972, grey seals have been protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act and are now returning in larger numbers to the shores of what was once their native habitat.

This map shows where a GPS tagged seal, Bronx, has swum since last summer. Image courtesy of Dave Johnston, Duke.

Some Cape Cod locals aren’t too happy about that. The seals come ashore in large groups, disrupting beach access in certain areas, and they leave behind their waste. They get caught up with fishermen’s gear and try to steal their catch, and the seals aren’t the friendliest marine mammals.

“People like dolphins. They tend not to like seals as much,” Johnston says, explaining that grey seals are smart, excellent predators and can be aggressive towards humans. “They can be loud and obnoxious, and they will bite,” he says.

That’s a challenge for both the seals and residents of the Cape Cod.

Part of the tagging effort is to increase people’s understanding of how grey seals interact with the ocean environment surrounding Cape Cod, and it could possibly explain why some of the animals are swimming as far south as the Carolinas.

The team is heading to the Cape Cod in early June to attach tags to seven more grey seals. The goal is ultimately to use the tracking data to improve the relationship between humans and seals there, Johnston says.

Fossil Primate Director Becomes a Fossil Primate Himself

May 20th, 2013

Gregg Gunnell directs the fossil primate division of the Duke Lemur Center.

By Karl Leif Bates

A newly discovered 25 million-year-old monkey fossil has been named for Gregg Gunnell, director of the Duke Lemur Center’s Division of Fossil Primates.

The thing is, Nsungwepithecus gunnelli, might turn out to be a pig. “It might be a ‘porky-pithecus,’ ” Gunnell said with a laugh. ”Early monkeys and early pigs looked remarkably alike.”

The fossil, from southwestern Tanzania, consists of a single molar. But it displays nine characteristics that would distinguish it from other Old World monkeys, according to Nancy Stevens, a paleontologist at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio who was the lead author on a paper about the discovery in Nature.

Gunnell’s monkey was found at a site in the Rukwa Rift Basin along with another new monkey fossil, Rukwapithecus fleaglei, for which scientists have a jaw and three teeth. It too has nine distinguishing features.

An artist's conception of the two newly named 25.2 million year old fossil monkeys described in Nature. (credit: Mauricio Anton)

An artist’s conception of the two newly named 25.2 million year old fossil monkeys described in Nature. Gregg Gunnell is the guy on the right. (credit: Mauricio Anton)

Gunnell said Stevens named the monkey after him to honor his role in helping her become a paleontologist. When Stevens was an undergraduate at Michigan State University, and Gunnell worked in the museum at the University of Michigan, he took Stevens and her now-husband and co-author Patrick O’Connor along on archaeological digs in Wyoming. Apparently the lessons stuck.

N. gunnelli is actually Gunnell’s third species. He was earlier honored by the naming of a bat and an extinct tillodont, which was, he reluctantly explains, a rather pig-like little animal.

“I’m hoping that this pig really is a monkey — that’ll improve my self-image,” he said.

Learn more

‘Street Cred’ Key to Leadership, Coach K says

May 20th, 2013

By Ashley Yeager

Former politician Ron Paul speaks at the 2013 Feagin Leadership Forum. Credit: Ashley Yeager, Duke.

Former presidential candidate Ron Paul, an MD from Duke Medical School, speaks at the 2013 Feagin Leadership Forum. Credit: Ashley Yeager, Duke.

Credibility is key for becoming a leader, both basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski and former politician Ron Paul told a group of Duke medical school students on May 18.

The two spoke as part of the Duke Sports Medicine Feagin Leadership Forum, a weekend meeting focused on ethical leadership.

“Ethical leadership takes courage, integrity and character,” Krzyzewski said. “You can see ethics and talk about ethics. But to do it, you’ve got to feel it.”

He, along with Paul and the other speakers and panelists, told the audience anecdotes where they had to choose to be ethical despite the decision not being the easiest or the most favorable among their peers.

Joanne Kurtzberg, a specialist working with children’s blood disorders, explained her difficult decision to send a patient to Europe for treatment using umbilical cord blood. The procedure was life-saving but had not yet been approved by the FDA in the U.S.

The decision and Kurtzberg’s pioneering effort in umbilical cord banking and treatments earned her what Krzyzewski called “street cred.” He said those looking to lead should be in constant search of credibility from their peers because it is one of the most important ways to show a person is willing to what is hard and difficult but the right thing to do.

While the audience was a mix of military, business and medical leaders, Krzyzewski tailored his speech mainly to the 2013 Feagin Medical Scholars, 16 medical school students who receive additional training in moral and ethical leadership, public speaking and other skills to make them well-rounded doctors.

Krzyzewski said the program is unique because it combines “two of the best jobs in the world,” being a doctor and being a leader. “Getting into medicine is huge,” he said, and becoming a leader “makes you part of something bigger.”

This program, he added, can take ethical leadership in medicine to a level no one has reached before, making it the gold standard, not only in the U.S., but also worldwide.

Success now lies in the scholars developing their “street cred.”

Duke Students Travel to D.C. to Present Findings to FDA

May 6th, 2013

By Nonie Arora

Duke students outside the FDA. Evelyna Kliassov, Ryan Gimple, Jenae Logan, Hiruni Amarasekara, Biqi Zhang, Selina Chen and Akash Shah. Credit: Huntington Willard

Last month, Duke seniors presented findings on noninvasive prenatal testing at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in Washington D.C.

The students explained to government officials that noninvasive prenatal testing requires only a blood sample from a pregnant woman. Current tests, such as amniocentesis, involve extracting cells from the placenta or fluid surrounding the fetus.

Instead, with the new technology labs genetically sequence fetal, cell-free DNA from in the mother’s blood to test for certain disorders. The method can detect when a fetus does not have the normal number of chromosomes. Specifically, it can detect abnormalities in chromosomes 13, 18 and 21, which can lead to disorders such as Down’s Syndrome.

The technology can also identify some fetal, sex-linked disorders and certain single-gene mutations. It is reliable after seven weeks of pregnancy, the students reported.

The presentation was a final project of the Genome Sciences & Policy capstone course, which leads to students earning a certificate in the field.

The students said Duke geneticist Hunt Willard and Dr. Robert Cook-Deegan, the professors for the course, chose noninvasive prenatal testing as the capstone topic because it is a new and rapidly growing field.

“Our professors wanted us to have a feel for what it’s like to research technology while it’s happening, while decisions are being made about whether it’s accurate and reliable,” said Biqi Zhang, one of the students in the class.

To investigate the scientific basis for noninvasive prenatal testing, its challenges, the active stakeholders and associated ethical considerations, these students interviewed individuals involved with different aspects of the technology.

“We had to go out and connect with many well-established professionals in related fields. It was exciting to develop skills that you normally don’t inside the classroom,” said Selina Chen, another student in the course.

“We had the opportunity to contact researchers and CEOs of companies to gain a comprehensive understanding of the technology,” Zhang added.

Evelyna Kliassov presenting on cost-effectiveness of noninvasive prenatal testing to the FDA. Credit: Huntington Willard.

The students said that the technology can and will fundamentally alter prenatal medicine. Throughout the semester, they have gained a nuanced understanding of its complexities and the viewpoints of many different stakeholders involved, from technology startup CEOs to primary care physicians.

“It was most exciting being able to go into the real world and see how this technology is being clinically implemented,” said capstone student Ryan Gimple.

“Traveling to the FDA was definitely nerve-wracking, for me at least,” capstone student Hiruni Amarasekara said. “We wanted to present a comprehensive report of the technology so that they could use this information in their decision making process on whether to recommend the test in the future. It was hard to tell what the FDA was thinking as we were presenting our information.”

The FDA has not yet stated a position on use of noninvasive prenatal testing.

Hope for Understanding Ourselves Goes to the Dogs

April 29th, 2013

By Ashley Yeager

Brian Hare and Evan MacLean, co-directors of Duke’s Canine Cognition Center, play with Lilu, a labradoodle. Credit: Ashley Yeager, Duke.

Lilu, a beautiful brown poodle-labradoodle mix, couldn’t sit still. Scents of pizza and peanut butter dog treats and the sights of new people easily distracted her.

The ADD behavior could be one trait that made her fail out of service-dog training.

“Six out of every ten dogs wash out of service training. But it’s hard right now for scientists to understand why,” said Duke evolutionary anthropologist Evan MacLean, co-director of the university’s Canine Cognition Center.

He, along with biological anthropologist Brian Hare and geneticist Misha Angrist spoke about ‘Genes, Brains and Games’ in man’s best friend as part of the Science and Society Journal Club on April 26.

MacLean and Hare explained that dogs have taken on many jobs in human society, acting as everything from pets, to our eyes and ears to being like coal-mine canaries searching for hidden bombs and missing people.

“Dog vocations require different sets of cognitive skills,” MacLean said. He studies military dogs, looking for traits that make them more suited for service tasks than pets like Lilu.

MacLean would ultimately like to identify the genetic components that underlie the characteristics suited for each type of job that a dog might do.

Scientists are interested in correlating dogs’ cognitive traits to their associated genes because the animals are “the most exquisite example of artificial selection,” Angrist said.

In Portuguese water dogs, for example, just six substitutions in individual DNA bases of the dogs explain variations in body size. In humans, nearly every gene could factor into height. It’s the same challenge that makes understanding human cognition and intelligence difficult at the genetic level.

Of course, defining cognition and intelligence at the conceptual level isn’t so clear cut either. “It’s so hard for people, journalists and the general public, to understand multiple intelligences,” Hare said.

He explained that at a basic level, cognition is the ability to make inferences, and that when we think of intelligence we think of IQ and standardized tests. These tests, however, measure only one type of intelligence. They don’t measure the ability to empathize, to verbalize a new idea or to put two completely separate ideas together to form a new one, which are other, important facets of intelligence, or really multiple intelligences.

At the Canine Cognition Center, and through the citizen science website Dognition, Hare and MacLean use standardized tests to study the variation in dogs’ intelligence. The tests, unlike the SAT or ACT, “cast a wide net across skills sets dogs could use for different vocations,” Hare said.

Dogs like Lilu, he added, are “really the hope of the world” for understanding cognition.

The Phishing Market Beyond the Internet

April 29th, 2013

By Ashley Mooney

Most people have heard of phishing scams on Internet, in which a person is tricked into giving up their money or identity by a clever ruse.

Temptations like this are found throughout all of capitalist society, says George Akerlof, 2001 Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences. He discussed ideas from his upcoming book, “Phishing for Phools” wth a Duke audience on April 25 to kick off “Decision Making Across the Disciplines,” a two-day symposium sponsored by the Duke Center for Interdisciplinary Decision Sciences.

Akerloff studies connections between individual’s decision biases and larger economic phenomena.

George Akerlof won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2001 for his research on economic decision making. (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

“Standard economics assumes that the people are smart, they may not know everything but they can be smart,” he said. “But there may be only one way in which you can be smart, but there are many, many ways in which you can be stupid.”

Akerlof, who is also Koshland Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley, developed his idea of phishing for phools from his paper, “The Market for ‘Lemons,’” which secured his Nobel nod.

“A fool with an f is a stupid or silly person, but it’s perfectly possible to make an error when… making a perfectly intelligent decision,” he said. “Somebody who makes a mistake is a phool with a ph.”

Although markets have the ability to maximize wealth, Akerlof said it is a double-edged sword.

“Free markets open us up to be phools. They open us up to those who seek to influence us to do what they want, but it’s not necessarily good for our sake,” he said. “We live in a world where some 5 billion adults can phish us for being a phool. We’ve intentionally opened ourselves up to such exploitation because of obvious advantages, but then we must also think about the other side.”

Markets, Akerlof noted, aim for three weak spots: emotional weaknesses, cognitive weaknesses and ignorance due to blocked channels of information.

Phishing is common on the internet, but occurs throughout the market. (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

When people are aware of phishing, it has relatively little effect. But when one doesn’t know about a phish, it can have a major impact. He proposed that obesity, product misinformation and the recent economic recession were all caused by phishing for phools.

“In the United States, the goal of almost every businessman is to get you to spend your money,” he said. “Life in capitalist economy is a continual temptation.”

Akerlof said according to economics textbooks, people decide on their demand by budgeting spending and then choosing the things that will maximize their happiness. But most people, he added, are not honest with themselves and as a consequence do not engage in rational budgeting.

“A very significant fraction of consumers are worried about how they’re going to make ends meet,” Akerlof said. “Almost 50 percent of people probably could not come up with $2,000 in a month for unforeseen situations.”

The only way to prevent phishing is to know about it, and to make informed decisions with that knowledge.

“Phishing for phools… creates bad equilibrium, especially if we don’t know about phishing for phools, we think that markets are totally benign,” Akerlof said.

Visible Thinking 2013!

April 24th, 2013

By Pranali Dalvi

Students explain their research to peers and faculty at Visible Thinking 2013 in the French Family Science Center. Photo credit: Pranali Dalvi

On April 19, Duke undergrads gathered in the French Family Science Center for Visible Thinking 2013.

The event showcases the exciting research undergraduates are doing in every discipline from the biological sciences to the humanities. For many students, it was also a celebration of several semesters and summers of hard work. Like seasoned scientists, students explained their research to their mentors, peers and prospective Dukies during the annual poster session.

Renata Dinamarco, a Trinity senior, studied the entrepreneurial preparedness of small businesses in Pembroke Pines, Florida.

Renata Dinamarco, Trinity’13. Photo credit: Pranali Dalvi

People are moving to the newer, western front of the city, so the eastern portion of Pembroke Pines is being redeveloped. Many people believed business owners in the east were underprepared as compared to the west when it came to opening small businesses.

When Renata interviewed 55 small business owners, she found that there was no statistical difference between entrepreneurs in the east versus the west. But, she did find that business owners in the east were more likely to view the city government negatively. Renata’s study of the demographics of small business populations is important for making informed policy decisions.

Christine Tsai, Trinity’14. Photo credit: Pranali Dalvi

Junior Christine Tsai studied the expression of gut-specific genes three days after fertilization in zebrafish. In a healthy developing embryo, epithelial cells line the internal organs.

To explore what genes are turned on and off during the development of the cells, Tsai compared gene expression from the gut cells to gene expression of cells from the entire body. Zebrafish have clear embryos that develop quickly, making them easy to study and use as a system to study genetics.

“I plan to continue conducting undergraduate research and know that the techniques and skills I have acquired and continue to develop through my research will further my understanding of processes in cell and molecular biology,” she said.

Ben Finkel, Trinity’13. Photo credit: Pranali Dalvi

For his honors thesis in evolutionary anthropology, Ben Finkel worked in Dr. Brian Hare’s lab combining his interest in education outreach with his passion for conservation. Finkel’s project examines how portrayals of chimpanzees as either aggressive or affiliative can affect our conservation perception. Through his research, Finkel wanted to understand how media steers conservation beliefs. He found that people were less likely to promote conservation of chimanzees if they showed aggressive behaviors rather than affiliative behaviors.

For more from Visible Thinking, check out my video about senior Emily Ngan who studies the brain’s immune system cells and their role in addiction.

Everyone Makes Mistakes

April 24th, 2013

By Pranali Dalvi

Dr. Brian Goldman, Credit: nsb.com

“Every important thing that I have ever learned since the day I was born has come from a mistake,” said Dr. Brian Goldman on April 17 during the Duke Colloquium.

Goldman is a renowned thinker and leader on issues of medical ethics and medical error. He has had great success in two high-adrenaline fields: broadcasting and medicine.

Not only is he a practicing emergency physician at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto but he also hosts an award-winning radio show White Coat, Black Art where he discusses the Canadian healthcare system. His bold TED Talk ‘Doctors Make Mistakes: Can We Talk about That?’ has over 700,000 hits.

Goldman’s life-altering mistake happened during a 2-month elective in neurology at Johns Hopkins. By medical school, he was a veteran insomniac, often waking up early — except for the one morning he was supposed to deliver grand rounds. That morning, he woke up at 10 AM, the exact moment when he was supposed to be presenting rounds in the neurology conference room at the hospital across the street.

“This mistake was a dramatic enough gesture to make me pay attention. I don’t wish a medical error on anybody, and I don’t wish the misfortune that happens to patients and families that are directly involved. But sometimes it’s a moment like that which redirects you and gets you into thinking about what you need to do with the rest of your life,” Goldman said.

The mistake made him reconsider neurology.

Credit: thestudentceo.com

Too often people have one of two worldviews of failure. The first inspires you to do better – if you fall down seven times, get up eight. The other shows success and failure as completely different paths.

“What we need is for health professionals and the public to realize that mistakes are inevitable with humans,” Goldman said.

What does error look like in medicine?

Radiology mistakes including X-ray and CT misinterpretations, miscalculating medication dosages, and hospital-acquired infections due to poor hand washing practices are human errors in medicine. All potentially catastrophic yet hard to detect.

Why do these errors happen?

The vast majority of health professionals are some of the most caring and compassionate individuals. Why do they mess up? Emphasis on quantity over quality, stress, miscommunication and messy handwriting are just a few of the many reasons.

“I spoke to a pharmacist who said that if you simply add 30 seconds of look-up time to every medicine dispensed at the hospital pharmacy, he’d have to hire 2 more full-time pharmacists. If you don’t have that kind of money, this is the sort of institutional cutting of corners that we have to go through to make ends meet,” Goldman said.

Credit: The Adventures of Pam & Frank Blog

Errors also result from the organization of the system. Residents often don’t go home despite 80-hour week regulations. They fear that no one else knows their patient as well as they do. Patient safety is also compromised as you increase the number of handovers due to duty hour regulations.

Goldman insists on the development of technologies to prevent mistakes, reducing responsibilities to allow increased productivity and fostering a loving and respectful environment for doctors to discuss their errors.

How can we aim for success in a field where failure is so effortless?

The Duke Colloquium, the brainchild of Dr. Andrew Hwang, is a university-wide initiative to pull the humanities into the professions. The event bring forward-thinking visiting scholars to Duke’s campus to inspire students, faculty, and the broader Duke community to become more socially conscious professionals.